


Despair Event Horizon

by sweet_witch_hella_knight



Series: All Weirdos Have Stories Too [1]
Category: That Guy with the Glasses/Channel Awesome
Genre: Accidental Pregnancy, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Backstory, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Drug Abuse, F/M, Movie: Highlander II (1991), drinking while pregnant, horrible people living miserable lives, the child abuse/neglect is mostly discussed but obviously its there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-04
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-03-23 19:04:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13794213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweet_witch_hella_knight/pseuds/sweet_witch_hella_knight
Summary: A background actress on a terrible movie hooks up with a cunning sadistic young man, leading to the worst parents in the world.





	Despair Event Horizon

**Author's Note:**

> idk, i wanted a bit of backstory for characters that really only exist to be horrible people most of the time. i like connecting NC lore back to the original theme of the show, so i made aunt despair an actress on a terrible movie.
> 
> their names aren't aunt despair and uncle lies yet because their nieces and nephews aren't born yet. i chose aunt despair's name partially because of bowling for soup's "1985" ("debbie just hit the wall" and so on). the title is a tv tropes reference: "The point where a character loses all hope."

Deborah needed this lunch break more than anything. The studio was draining her of her beauty, no matter how much makeup they slathered on. It wasn't even like she was the _star_ of the film- she just came in and said whatever lines would move the story along. She was sick of bit parts like that. In some projects, they had such a low budget that they even had to put her in different clothes and act like she was a different character in the same story. Ridiculous! Who would fall for that? But work was work, and attention was attention, and money was money no matter how little she got paid.  
  
So maybe she didn't really understand what was going on in the plot sometimes. So it made no connection to the original source material. So Sean Connery was playing a character with two possible nationalities and neither of them matched his Scottish accent. So what if she sometimes overheard Christopher Lambert sobbing in the bathroom about how his contract felt like a death sentence when all he wanted to do was leave and keep his good name. She was still going to be on the big screen! Plus, she was still young....well, 28 wasn't very young by celebrity standards, they would probably expect her to come to set with a walker in five years, but her career wasn't dead yet! There would be time to find a movie to be a part of that wasn't doomed and would pay her off well. Maybe even one she could actually star in.  
  
But for now, Debbie just did the best she could, drinking away the inconsistencies of the plot and the bullshit scenes the director peppered her and her peers into. The _Highlander II_ team hid alcohol wherever they could, so she could pretty much reach into the walls and pull out some vodka, which she gladly did.  
  
After a deep sigh, Debbie took a swig of vodka and leaned against the wall, almost drifting off. The only thing to snap her out of her daze was a man towering over her, holding down a pack of Marlboros. "Care for a cigarette, ma'am?"  
  
Debbie looked up and got a better look at the man. He sported a very clean sweater and carried a pipe. Genuine luscious brown hair coated his head, with bangs that came to the top of his thick glasses that, rather than making him look like a nerd, accentuated his haunting blue eyes. He wore an unsettling open-mouthed smile, but Deborah swore she saw a hint of warmth in it.  
  
She took the cigarette from him.  "Thanks," she said as she lit it. It was a downgrade from the coke and heroin she'd gotten a hold of from some of her more seedy costars, but anything that could take her mind off work was a vice worth having.  
  
The man slid down next to her against the wall and smoked his mystery pipe. "So what do you do here?" he said after removing the pipe from his mouth.  
  
Debbie blew a long puff of smoke. "Extra work. Really dumb. Don't even get a trailer."  
  
"Well, that's unfair now, isn't it?" the man said. "A beautiful woman like you ought to get the same treatment of all those Botoxed Hollywood phonies."  
  
Debbie scoffed. "Maybe if I got some of that fancy surgery, I could be hired by people who know how to make a good movie."  
  
"You must admit though, this is a fun set to sneak around," the man said. "Just the other day, I got to see Christopher Lambert nearly lose a finger." He grinned. "Oh, how everybody screamed. It was delightful."  
  
Debbie smirked. "You've got a sick sense of humor. I appreciate that."  
  
"I just think that after a long day's work, watching people suffer can be quite cathartic." As the man spoke, Debbie took a long drink from her vodka and nodded along. "That's why I like to sneak in here. I heard it was just filled to the brim with misery." He winked at her as she gulped down her drink. "Not to mention stunning actresses. I was hoping to take the 'virgin' out of Virginia Madsen, but I didn't expect to see an extra catch my eye like you have."  
  
Having spent much of the past year sleeping on a park bench and now being stuck on the Hollywood equivalent of a sinking ship, she knew exactly what he meant with his schadenfreude. Plus, he considered her worth looking at, unlike most of these directors. "I like the way you think." She extended a hand. "I'm Debbie Despair."  
  
"You can call me Mister Lies." Mister Lies shook her hand back.  
  
"Funny name," Debbie scoffed before taking a swig of her drink.  
  
"I've participated in shady business in the past," Mister Lies explained, "and I figure if I include the word 'Lies' in my alias, they'll think it's too obvious to be a lie."  
  
Debbie watched closely as he put the pipe back in his mouth and sucked on the bit. More than a little drunk now, she started to pet the top of his head. Mister Lies did not object to the affection and instead brought her closer to his face. "So, Miss Despair," he said in a hush, "do you suppose we could drop by your place after you wrap up today?"  
  
Debbie sighed, filling Mister Lies' face with the smell of cigarette smoke and booze. "I don't really have a real place right now," she admitted. "I'm still in student debt and can't afford a place here. I was living with a friend, but she kicked me out for spending all her money on booze."  
  
Mister Lies shook his head. "What an absolute bitch. Booze is a human necessity."  
  
"I know. Now the best I can do is sleep in the studio. The director is too afraid of me walking out on this trash fire to complain about it, so he just takes a part of my salary and lets me do whatever I want." She lay her head on Mister Lies' shoulder, depressed but finding comfort in talking with someone who got how bitter she was.  
  
After some quizzical sucking on his pipe, Mister Lies said, "Why don't you just live with me? I've been renting a very nice bedroom, and the landlord doesn't like to challenge me very much. You can come in tonight, and we'll see how it goes."  
  
Debbie smiled. He was a bit of a twisted man, but he had a heart for her, and she only cared right now about the people who cared about her. "That's the best offer I've ever gotten."  
  
They stared intently at each other, and then Mister Lies went in for a kiss. Debbie hadn't been kissed like that in months, not since her fling with the key grip. He lowered her down to the ground and let their kissing grow to making out, and then, one could say, "quickening" each other's loins. So what if people saw? Nobody gave a damn about anything on this set.  
  
  
  
Debbie was still miserable working on the movie, but at least now she had somebody to go home and snort coke off of every night to distract herself. Mister Lies knew the sickest spots in the area to hang out. They would go out to the bars and try to provoke people to fight each other, spreading rumors about cheating girlfriends and who spilled whose drink, and even employing a bit of Satanic manipulation (another cool trick that Mister Lies passed onto Debbie) until fists started to fly. Debbie knew she should feel bad, but she was having too much fun to care. Plus, it turned her sort-of-boyfriend on to cause pain, and next thing they knew, they would be in the bathroom moaning to the sounds of fists flying.  
  
It was a fine relationship, for about a month. Then Debbie started to feel sick- well, sicker than she usually felt working on the set with a killer hangover. She started having to throw up in the morning, even though her body had mostly adjusted to the garbage she put into it. She struggled to think of what else it could be, until she remembered that she did have a lot of sex with her host, and that he didn't like spending money on condoms, and she never remembered to take her birth control if she even still had it around...  
  
_Aw, shit._  
  
When Debbie came home to Mister Lies, he picked up on her mood. "You look a bit on edge, dear. What's wrong?" He started pouring her a cup of bourbon from his side table. "Care for something to dull the nerves?"  
  
Debbie shook her head, which surprised Mister Lies, but he kept pouring. "No, I learned something today. I don't think you're going to like it, because I sure as hell don't." Mister Lies pursed his lips, then Debbie dropped the ball: "I'm pregnant."  
  
Mister Lies did not change his expression as the bourbon he was pouring began to spill over the cup onto the carpet. "Oh," he said. "Pregnant. With a child." Pause. Still spilling that bourbon. "Did I have something to do with that?"  
  
Debbie walked over and snatched the bourbon from him. "Well, considering you're the only man I've fucked in the last couple of months, yes, almost definitely."  
  
Mister Lies huffed. "I guess we're going to have to take care of that now, if you know what I mean." He whispered, "Abortion. That's what I mean."  
  
"I know what you mean," Debbie sighed. "But you can barely afford to house both of us, and if we pay for the abortion now, that'll cut into our rent and groceries." She sat down in the seat next to Mister Lies. "Hopefully once I get my paycheck, we can get it over with." She slumped in her seat. "God, I hate thinking about the future." Saying she hated thinking at all would have also been accurate.  
  
Mister Lies said, "Well, you know what they say about time's arrow."  
  
Debbie shot Mister Lies a bitter glance. "What, it marches forward?"  
  
"Nope. It comes around behind you and sticks you up the ass when you least expect it."  
  
Debbie shrugged. "Can't argue with that."  
  
  
  
The next paycheck Debbie got was the last one she would get _._ Even with the director's low standards and desperation, Debbie was too sick and tired to keep working, and the director figured it would be easier to just let her off early than embarrass himself further by featuring an actress with morning sickness in several background shots. The paycheck she got still wasn't enough for any of the pricey abortion clinics of Hollywood.  
  
From then on, she and Mister Lies did the best that they could with what they had. Since they liked each others' company more than anyone else's and were probably stuck together by this kid now anyway, they had a cheap little wedding; it was the first time they had entered a church in years, and definitely the last. Mister Lies took up a job as a freelance psychologist for a few months, but his interest in psychology leaned towards emotional manipulation far more than it did actually helping people, so he lost most of his clients and couldn't thrive for very long. Eventually they realized it was too pricey living in Hollywood, so they decided to move to Chicago. "I have some family there that I can probably blackmail into giving us some financial support," Mister Lies explained. "Also I hear the pizza is pretty good."  
  
When she was about five months pregnant, the reviews came in for _Highlander II_ , and they were unanimously unkind. Debbie wasn't shocked at all, but she did have a stinging revelation: once she became a mother and her body was ruined (and not in that drug-addled way that Hollywood preferred), her film career would probably never be able to advance beyond this. So much for her aspirations of fame and universal attention. "The last thing anybody may ever see me do onscreen," Debbie realized, "is in the background of that godawful movie."  
  
In the meantime, he and Debbie tried to literally drink away their troubles, but her unborn baby was ungodly resilient to the alcohol and continued to drain the life out of her mom. "It's like it isn't able to understand that we want it to just leave us alone," Mister Lies would say.  
  
Debbie's best bet during all those months she was pregnant was to try and forget that this child even existed, to avoid depressing herself further about all her lost opportunity and just zone out and only care about her husband and herself. When her water eventually broke a couple weeks early (because of course _that's_ the effect all the drinking would have on her), she was so numb that she barely even cared. She and Mister Lies were watching _American Gladiators_ and wanted to wait to see who got beaten before leaving. Apparently they waited too long; their daughter was born in the taxi on the way, with Mister Lies administering weed in place of the epidural to ease his wife's nerves. Traumatized, the driver let them out at the hospital with no charge, where the new parents gave the newborn girl to the doctors and got a room for Debbie to relax in.  
  
"I was considering just leaving the baby in the car," Debbie admitted, "but when the driver gave us that discount, I realized this kid might actually get us some benefits in the long run."  
  
"You make a very good point, though I would have understood completely if you had left her screaming for mercy in that taxi," Mister Lies assured his wife, petting her hair. "You know, I've focused so much on wishing she didn't exist, I haven't really thought up a name for her yet. Anything coming to mind for you?"  
  
"Uhhhh..." Debbie tried to think of a name, any name that she wouldn't hate calling her child. "Maybe Joan. Like Joan Rivers. She's like, an icon for me. Can you pass me my flask?" Mister Lies did just that.  
  
"Joan Lies. Or maybe Joan Despair," Mister Lies tested the name. "We'll probably forget it by tonight after a few vodkas, but it's still a nice name."  
  
Debbie nodded, and then nodded off. The exhaustion of giving birth was a better sedative than Xanax.  
  
  
  
The baby loved to cry. Even after they fed or rocked or changed her, Joan would end up crying as soon as they put her back down. It was a pretty bad case of colic, but neither of them gave enough of a shit to look into what ailed her. Overwhelmed emotionally and desperate to ignore it, Debbie started smoking and drinking more than ever.  
  
When he saw Debbie trying to console the child and how Joan's wailing made Debbie want to wail too, Mister Lies would touch her shoulder and tell her, "Why don't you put her down and just hit a blunt with me?"  
  
Debbie would look at the crying baby, look at her husband, and put her daughter in her crib (or sometimes on the floor) and just walk away. She just wanted to ignore her awful world, and if that meant letting her parasite of a child cry herself to sleep, then she'd just put on her earmuffs, smoke some weed, and let it happen.  
  
What's the worst thing a neglected infant with fetal alcohol syndrome living in a house with all sorts of drugs in the air could grow up to be, anyway?


End file.
